-
Spring Banke (Delaware Division of Historical & Cultural Affairs, Dover, Del.) -
(Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
The small, two-part house is an extremely rare survival in the southeastern corner of the state. The 500-acre Spring Banke tract was granted to William Digges by Maryland in 1687. (This region, Baltimore Hundred, was claimed by Maryland as late as 1775.) The original one-story frame dwelling has a brick chimney partially exposed on the end wall, in Eastern Shore fashion. The place was occupied by tenants toward the end of the eighteenth century, but housed an owner for forty years in the mid-nineteenth century, widow Nancy Williams. She ran an adjacent store and held a half-interest in the sixty-five-foot schooner, Mary Ann Catherine. By then, the house was enlarged with a two-story cypress-shingled addition abutting the original, lower section. Both were framed with oak and gum timbers. Few changes were made prior to a restoration in the 1970s.